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Updated: June 2, 2025
"We shall know all that at sunrise," said Regnar; and avoiding the haunts of the seals, they hurried through the gray light along the devious windings of the ice-foot, until they reached the murdered sealer. The body lay as it had been landed on the edge of a pool, and was that of a singularly handsome man, about forty-five years of age.
On the wild rocky shores where his ship was set fast, there was a belt of ice lining the margin of the sea, which he termed the "ice-belt," or the "ice-foot." This belt never melted completely, and was usually fast to the shore. In fact it was that portion of the sea-ice which was left behind each spring when the general body of ice was broken up and swept away.
The day following that on which the wives of Simek and Okiok, and the mothers of Arbalik and Ippegoo with the spinster Sigokow arrived, the southern Eskimos resumed their route northward, and the pursuers continued their journey to the south the former in their sledges over the still unmelted ice-foot along the shore; the latter, in kayaks, by a lead of open water, which extended as far as the eye could reach.
Long crawled out of the tent and, bracing himself against the wind, struggled up to the ridge; but nothing could be seen but the rocky coast, and the ice-foot, and the chopping sea with the pack stretching off in the distance. It was a bitter disappointment. Long went back disheartened, but after waiting uneasily awhile longer, he mounted the ridge a second time.
It seems to me that a water-vapor is rising out there, by yonder high pinnacle just in range of the pool below the ice-foot; but the tide will soon let us know if there are any large leads open within a dozen miles." "There's a sign in your favor," cried La Salle, pointing in the direction of the supposed 'lead. "There's a flock of Brent geese, and they can't live away from open water.
'If you can picture our house nestling below this small hill on a long stretch of black sand, with many tons of provision cases ranged in neat blocks in front of it and the sea lapping the ice-foot below, you will have some idea of our immediate vicinity. As for our wider surroundings it would be difficult to describe their beauty in sufficiently glowing terms.
Leaping down upon the ice-foot, the party hastened to their respective stands, nearly a mile out on the Bar Davies being some four hundred yards from that of La Salle.
With the ship lightened, by being unloaded, to a large extent, of all of the stores, she did not very appreciably rise, but the Commander and the Captain agreed that she could be safely worked considerably closer to the shore, inside of the tide-crack possibly; and the Roosevelt was made fast to the ice-foot of the land, with a very considerable distance between her and open water.
At last the boat arrived at the site of the wreck-cache, and the shore was eagerly scanned, but nothing could be seen. Rounding the next point, the cutter opened out the cove beyond. There, on the top of a little ridge, fifty or sixty yards above the ice-foot, was plainly outlined the figure of a man. Instantly the coxswain caught up the boat-hook and waved his flag.
The ice-foot descended to various heights of ten or twenty feet above the water, and behind it the snow surface rose in long undulating slopes to rounded ridges, the heights of which could only be guessed. Whatever doubt remained in their minds that this was snow-covered land, a sounding of 100 fathoms quickly removed it.
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